Binance’s Singapore branch- Binance Asia Services [BAS] has announced its intention to revoke its application efforts for a crypto license in the city-state and would wrap up its digital payment token [DPT] services in its local affiliate by 13 February 2022. Revealing more in the latest press release, the crypto giant noted that new users would be prohibited to open positions and the existing ones will be required to close their crypto and fiat portfolios from the local site, Binance.sg.nd by the abovementioned date.
The blog post added that the decision was not easy and expressed regret for the same. Richard Teng, Chief Executive Officer at the firm stated,
We always put our users first, so our decision to close Binance.sg was not taken lightly. Our immediate priority is to help our users in Singapore transition their holdings to other wallets or other third-party services.
Notably, the local arm of the crypto firm was among 170 entities that had applied to the Monetary Authority of Singapore [MAS] for a license to offer digital asset services. The CZ-led exchange had been operating under a temporary exemption under the city-state’s Payment Services Act [PS Act]. In a nutshell, the Binance Asia Services license was still under consideration from the regulator.
On December 8, this year, the local arm of the trading platform made an investment in Hg Exchange [HGX], a regional private security exchange, enabling it to obtain an 18% stake following which the platform announced its intention to work in collaboration with HGX to promote the blockchain ecosystem in the region.
The reason behind Binance’s exit from Singapore
The latest decision to withdraw its applications from the region was not strange as the trading platform has been contemplating for a while, as per earlier reports that hinted at a possibility of plans to scrap its application and look elsewhere. Apart from that, the increasing regulatory scrutiny from different regions around the world, while its application was still under review from the Monetary Authority of Singapore further exacerbated the decision to look for safer options.
Besides that, in September this year, MAS added the trading firm to its list of Investor’s Alert that contains a number of unregulated platforms that have been falsely perceived as being licensed or regulated by the authority. Soon after that, a representative of the crypto exchange cleared up that their two units, Binance.com and Binance Singapore [Binance.sg] are separate entities.